After-effects
by DanishCookieBlueBox
Summary: An after-Aftershock fiction. Claire doesn't die.
1. Chapter 1

***A\N: This is basically an AU story, my take on what might have happened after Aftershock if Claire hadn't died. I guess I just felt that she deserved more time. I couldn't have her die like that.

Please be aware of the fact that I am not a native speaker and this is my first attempt on a fic and, let's say, on anything longer than 130 words in English. I swear I did my best here. Please let me know if you find that anything is wrong or sounds funny and strange, for it will make my English better, and feel free to comment and criticize to help me improve. Thanks for reading***

Rey looked at Lennie. He had been watching his partner closely during the last few days, not liking the distant look in his eyes. He knew how a tough case could affect an officer, as he himself had been taken aback by his first case in the new precint, and sure as Hell knew that the case they were on right now was a disturbing one. The poor woman lying dead after pleading desperately for her life, for God's and her children's sake, was still haunting his sleep after two weeks of investigations. But for Lennie there was more than that, of that he was sure.

The woman was a good person, one who taught night classes for those who wouldn't get a second chance from anyone else. A lot of people said to them that they would have never thanked her enough, even had she lived a thousand years. She was deeply loved by her husband, her children, by everyone around her. Among all people, she really didn't deserve it.

But for Lennie, there was also another woman who didn't deserve her fate. It was a young, nice, good looking woman who was now lying in a hospital bed, in intensive care, damaged almost beyond repair. A woman Rey didn't know very well, but that he had seen around so many times he couldn't count them, so dedicate to her job, always ready to help them find a piece of information among thousands of papers. A woman who was taking a drunk friend back home. A good person, whose car had been smashed by some drunk idiot who didn't know what he was doing. Lennie was taking it hard on himself. He had made the most sensible decision, not driving while being drunk, and still - bad timing and shitty irony of the world all the way, as Claire was in a coma right now because of a driver who was not as accurate as he was.

He had been called that night by the Lieutenant. Lennie was at the hospital and he had to pick him up, Van Buren said she was going to explain things later, right now he had to move. Her voice was thick and pained and sounded very serious, so he quickly sneaked out of bed - his own bed, not the one of the young woman he had spent the day with - thanking God he had picked up the call, and left his wife a note on the fridge. At the hospital, Rey was surprised by mr. McCoy's presence. He was completely out of himself. Jeez, the man looked like he could kill Lennie at any minute. Van Buren was trying to calm him down and had at least managed to keep some physical distance between the two men. Lennie, on his part, was slumped on a chair, his head in his hands, his face tense, eyes completely worn out. _I must be missing something_, thought Rey, looking at the scene, _What the hell is going on?_

Lennie himself had explained him the car accident. Later, with tears in his eyes and slurred words, he had said that Claire was a daughter to him, that the doctors had to save her. McCoy kept watching him from the wall where he had been cornered by Van Buren, a hand on his mouth to prevent it from screaming out. By the time Rey had managed to take Lennie home, as Van Buren was having more and more trouble containing McCoy, Claire was still in surgery. Lennie didn't remember any of it, and neither Rey nor the Lieutenant dared bringing it up, but the scene had brought to Rey a totally new perception of his partner, a more human aspect of him, one he sympathized with.

That was two nights before. Now Lennie seemed normal, really, the same hard, cynical officer he knew, the tough officer Lennie was used to show to anyone. But he couldn't concentrate. He often forgot what he had to say and couldn't do any paperwork without making at least one stupid mistake. Right now, his stare was wandering into space without focusing on anything. He wouldn't talk about it, wouldn't take a day off. Everything was always all right for him. But Rey could bet Lennie wasn't sleeping.

And then there was the Loo. She wasn't ok as well. She had talked to Claire just an hour before the accident happened, they had shared dinner: no way it wasn't affecting her. She wouldn't talk as well, not to him anyway, but he could sense her guilt: had she delayed Claire's departure... Just a minute or two. Yes, maybe things would be different. Maybe things would be ok.

_Sometimes destiny's a bitch_, thought Rey.


	2. Chapter 2

"You're taking the Salva case" said Adam, his no-nonsense tone unusually getting on Jack's nerves.

He tried not to let it show, though. Adam meant very much to him. However, he really was not ready to take a serious case right now. He decided to put on his arrogant mode not to let that show as well.

"Salva will plead out. An answering machine can handle it."

"Nothing on the front page of The Post is that easy. You'll need a second chair."

Somewhere deep down in himself, Jack knew Adam was right. But Claire... He just wasn't ready.

"I'm doing fine on my own."

Adam side eyed him, then faced him and glared up to him with a 'no-you're-not' look.

"You're not getting paid all that money to look up cases in the library."

Snotty remark, but his voice was caring. He was right and Jack knew. All right, he could handle the case. But not another assistant.

"If I need somebody, I can borrow Crocker for the afternoon."

"Crocker..." the poor guy had his desk full of Claire's cases, that he had had to reassign, and was nearing a breakdown. "What do you know about Jamie Ross? "

"Not much. She used to work at Gorton and Steinhart". _And I don't really trust ex-defense attorneys_, he wanted to add, but eventually opted for suppressing the line.

"She was married to Neal Gorton. She asked to stay on the case."

_The fuck I care_, thought Jack. "She's been in the office for less than six months."

"She's had five years as a criminal defense attorney. Eight homicide trials, seven acquittals."

"...and a kid in day care. I need somebody who can put in the late hours."

"...to watch the answering machine? I like her. So will you. "

Jack knew he should reply. Knew he would, had he been his normal self, but he couldn't find it in himself. He just felt spent, and sad, and, well, utterly destroyed. He just glared at Adam a little and turned around, knowing that his stare couldn't possibly mean anything but weakness.

Winning so easily against Jack was not something Adam was used to. To be honest, he didn't like it at all. The Jack Adam knew would have never let something pass if he didn't like it. But this here was Jack's ghost and he hated to see it. He was opening the door when Adam stopped him.

"Jack".

He turned.

"How is she?"

Jack swallowed hard, took a deep breath. Adam surprised himself doing the same.

"They suspended the drugs that were keeping her in a coma two days ago. She hasn't woken up yet, but they say it's normal because her body is very damaged."

Adam nodded slightly while Jack spoke. The tall man looked like a little child struggling to remember all the very difficult words that he had been taught about a very difficult situation. _And once he was my best attorney_, Adam thought, but it was a painful thought, so he willed it away.

"Are the doctors confident?"

Jack just shrugged and kept staring into Adam's eyes, without really focusing on them. Just as Adam was starting to find that blank stare unbearable, Jack turned and left without saying a word. It pained Adam to see Jack like this more than he would have consciously allowed himself, especially since there was nothing he could do. _Maybe if miss Kincaid were to be here, she would know how to cheer him up_, he thought, chuckling and wincing at the same time: that exactly was the matter.

He smiled a little: it was fun thinking that he didn't like Claire very much at first, because in the end he had grown to really appreciate her. She was, indeed, just like Jack had described her once: one hell of a lawyer. He couldn't suppress a grin while recalling the conversation he had had with her when he had just assigned her to Jack's office, the one where he had commanded her not to fall for him, and the similar one he had had with Jack. "Keep your pants zipped" he had said to him, and "Keep him out of your bed, miss Kincaid" to her. They both had precedents in that field, for Christ's sake, and another blow could have possibly ended the both of their careers, especially hers. But they were never two to take advice, were they? It seemed like they couldn't help themselves, and all was left to him was to turn a blind eye to it. Ignorance is bliss, they say, and it sure is right. But at a certain point he couldn't ignore the affair waved under his nose, because people were really starting to talk. He remembered the confrontation with Jack, which had led to nowhere. Jack was not letting her go. He was serious. She was serious. He was happy, they both were. And she was pregnant.

Adam felt he had to stop thinking. The unpredictability of life, right now, was just too much for his old heart. Any other name on the file of a stupid car accident and the case would have been sent to Street Crimes. He wouldn't even have blinked an eye looking at it. But this was hitting close to home, it was a real tragedy for each of them. _That's what people feel when somebody takes something, someone, from them_, Adam thought. _Of course the driver will be prosecuted. But it doesn't matter. This time, justice doesn't matter to any of us_.

And then his train of thoughts came back, taking him in – the child who had died before being born; the woman struggling to keep herself alive in a hospital bed; the man struggling to keep himself together in the next room. He had to stop and really not go to the place in his mind where Claire might never recover from the coma. It was too hard to think it could possibly get worse.


	3. Chapter 3

The room was yellow and small. Some dirt was on the floor and on the walls and the place was just unpleasant altogether. Lennie was sitting on one of the chairs forming a circle in the centre of the room, between an old woman who was losing her hair and a young man who couldn't stop sniffing and rubbing the back of his head. All around him people were sitting uneasily, and not only because the chairs were uncomfortable. A lot of them had already shared their misery with everyone. You could easily recognize them: eyes fixed on their feet, arms folded and a tense expression on their face. _This is just awful_, thought Lennie. How exactly was telling everyone his problems going to help him?

" I want to stop. I really do", was saying a very nervous and very young woman, "I have two children and I have to raise them the right way. I know I can't do it if I'm drunk; the point is that I can't stop. Social care said they're gonna take my kids away from me, but I won't let it happen. No way. I just need... A little help. That's all. It's no wrong to need help, is it?"

She looked down at the floor, twisting her hands furiously and fighting the tears forming in her eyes. A single one escaped and ran slowly down her cheek, disappearing under her jaw and then reappearing on her neck. She didn't dare wipe it, hoping nobody would notice it, but another one was already following the path. For a little while, silence embraced the sight of the tears streaming down her face.

At a certain point, the Tim guy who was chairing the meeting dared break the spell:

"Well", he said with a forced smile, looking Lennie in the eye,"What about you? Please say your name and the reason why you're here."

Lennie wanted to run. Seriously. For a moment he just watched those people watching him and kept his mouth shut, trying to find the courage to admit his weakness to everyone. Or, maybe, to admit it to himself. He sighed, then took a deep breath. _Come on, let's get it done_, he thought.

"My name is Leonard and I am here because... Because..."

Man, he didn't really want to do this. He already had too many times before, and none of them had worked. In the end, relapse was always a step or two ahead, just waiting for the time he really needed a glass, such as a bad case, an execution, a very bad lunch with a very angry and sad daughter. This was not going to be different. He was not going to be different. He was just the man who would destroy every good he was given, like a bull in a china shop. _What am I doing here?_, he asked himself. But then he thought that if he hadn't been that drunk that night Claire would be okay, and that maybe his daughter wouldn't hate him if he hadn't been such a jerk when she was little. _And not only when she was little_, he added to himself, and felt horrible. This was not only about him. To be honest, this was mostly not about him. He had to come out of the shit he had thrown himself into. So he started, speaking, as his usual, very matter-of-factly:

"Alcohol has ruined my life. All of it. I'm 56 and I got divorced twenty years ago because of it, then married again, and got divorced again, yeah, guess why. My daughters hate me. A kid that I cared about, well, she's in a coma right now because she was taking me home, because I was drunk, and she was hit by..."

The lights, so blurred, the world passing by out of the car window... How vivid the memory was in his mind, how clear. He was drowning his soul in the glass, trying to kill his remorse, his guilt, and then, out of the blue, she'd offered him a ride. "Lennie, I doubt your daughter hates you", she'd said, just before...

"She was hit by a drunk driver."

He shut up and looked away. When the knot in his throat didn't threaten anymore to choke him, he spoke again:

"If I could go back I'd change it all. I would stay away from the bottles when my girls were little. I would walk past the bar I was the night the kid and I had the accident. But I can't. All I can do is not to be that drunk driver for somebody else, stay sober and regain my daughters' trust. I don't want them to hate me – No, I want them to be proud of me. And I don't want to risk losing my job, as I did more than once because of alcohol, because, you know, my job's all I have. So... Yeah, that's basically why I'm here."

The bald man who was sitting right in front of him, across the circle, looked at him nodding.

"It's just the same here, mate. Just the same."

The man said his name was Jack, and Lennie instantly thought of McCoy. _Maybe a rehab would do him too some good_, thought Lennie with a very, very small inner smile. _McCoy_. The man who, that night of two weeks before, had said "To hell with her!" with such a bitter smile, it was not easy to shake it off. _Mom always says:"You must be careful what you wish for, 'cause it might come true"_, thought Lennie, _Maybe McCoy's mom didn't tell him. Or maybe he didn't care, and it is very plausible. But the way he had to learn his lesson... No, I don't think he deserved it. I don't think any man in the world would deserve it_.

The kid cared for McCoy, as strange as it seemed to Lennie. _How could someone care for an ass like McCoy?_, he thought. But Claire did, or else she wouldn't have bothered to come at that bar at all, after witnessing an execution she didn't and wouldn't justify - while McCoy did. So, maybe it was time to use the worldly overused L-word for their affair, Lennie didn't know and, to be honest, didn't think it was his business. What was sure was that she was carrying his baby. That the doctors had said. Once again he wondered how McCoy could live with that - finding a woman you like and have her like you, all of you, even your worst side, trusting her and building a relationship and having a baby, just to have everything shattered in the blinking of an eye.

And, in fact, McCoy was not living too well. "You know... Before it happened... She wanted to quit. I talked her out of it" had said McCoy just two nights before, when Lennie had asked him if he wanted to go for a couple of drinks, just the two of them. McCoy had declined, but let his mask slip for once, seeking some resemblance of human comfort in him. Lennie had mumbled something about how he himself could have walked past the bar, and suddenly had let himself out of the door, closing it behind him without looking back.

For certain things, he and McCoy were just the same: they didn't know how to show pain - and didn't know how to take comfort. They just didn't know how to be humans, sometimes, and those times it was best, for the both of them, to be alone. Besides, he wasn't ready for McCoy's pain and guilt, neither was he ready for his own.

_It's just too much for one man_, he thought.


	4. Chapter 4

There was only one possible explanation for it: he wasn't being himself. Only three weeks before he had watched a man die on a capital execution without blinking, deeply convinced that Justice had rightly taken its course. Now, instead, he was opposing his assistant not to consider the defendant's crime a capital offence. Just two months before, attorney and assistant were exactly in the switched positions. But, anyway, that wasn't his assistant. That wasn't Claire.

He had been feeling strange lately: she wasn't with him, but it felt like she was, as he constantly thought of her, of what she would say, what she would do. Her voice was in his mind. Sometimes he mistaked miss Ross for her. Sometimes he called her Claire.

He was stuck: something had to happen, but he couldn't do anything about it, and since he was a man of action - always had been - the situation was just unbearable. All he could do was sit his sorry ass in his chair and wait: she could either wake up or not wake up ever again, but nobody knew what it would be of the two, and it really wasn't living. It can be frustrating when you're waiting for something that will bring happiness, but waiting for something to happen, knowing that it might not be good at all, is just crazy. And crazy was he feeling indeed. _No, this is not living_, he thought, _this is dying slowly_.

Meanwhile, while he was waiting in line for his fate to come and touch him, her voice in his head wouldn't leave him alone. It kept saying that capital punishment was wrong. _And I'm actually listening to it. I didn't listen to her when she was real and I'm doing it now_, he often thought. But the edges of her disappointed expression were way too sharp, the sight too vivid in his imagination not to pay it attention. So be it, then, no capital punishment: the man should at least send flowers to her bed in the hospital, because she had just saved his life. _I hope you're happy_, thought Jack, and he really meant it: he would have done anything to have that smooth voice of hers compliment him. Or at least shut up and let him concentrate on his job, and not her, for a couple of hours. Just a couple of hours. Maybe in that couple of hours he could have a chance of finding himself again, of finding it in himself to face that difficult trial.

Maybe he could find the strength to face reality. Because he knew he had to face reality. And reality was that her body was a wreck and her brain had been severely damaged and doctors weren't even sure she would ever get out of coma. That was the reason why Adam had assigned him a new assistant. That was the reason why that miss Ross had already moved all of her things upstairs, in Claire's cubicle. Yes, that was reality. But at the end of the day, when usually he would get out of the office with her, he wasn't able to face it. So he glanced quickly at his watch and looked for the scotch bottle in the drawer.

Drinking before driving. He didn't care. He could fall off the bike and smash his head on the street. And die, yes. He didn't care. And then he thought of investing, maybe, someone's wife. That someone's pain. He was going to take a cab.

His pain had been blinding, really, and he couldn't think of doing something like that to another person. And Claire wasn't even his wife. He was nothing, legally, to her, he wasn't taking any decision for her, doctors weren't talking to him. He meant nothing for her now. And he meant nothing without her, by the way. Mac, her stepfather, was keeping him informed, calling him anytime she got better or worse and hiding the fact from her mother. And so Jack lived, constantly waiting for something to happen, constantly stuck between the hope of a call from Mac and the fear of the very same thing. He jumped every time the phone rang. And it usually was work, but he still hoped, and feared.

And then, at his third gulp on the scotch, the phone rang, like it always did when he was thinking about it. It was starting to scare him a little, the fact that it never rang for real. _Hallucinations are clearly not a good sign_, he thought. But then it rang a second time.

"McCoy"

"Hello mr. McCoy. It's... Mac. I just wanted to say that I have good news. Claire is out of coma."

"You sure?" he asked, his voice coming out a little choked.

"Of course. I suggest you come now. You know... Claire's mother's out of the city for a few hours. If she knows about this call I'm dead, but I think it's right for you to see her."

_It sure as hell is_, thought Jack. He mumbled a thank you and hang up. He quickly got up, grabbed his jacket.

He didn't even knock on the door to Adam's office, he just opened it, to find a slightly perplexed Jamie Ross inside. He didn't care he was interrupting something. Adam glared at him with a 'you-must-have-a-very-good-reason-for-this' look.

"Claire is out of coma"

He saw Adam's eyes light up and a small smile creep up his face.

"Then what are you still doing here?"

Jack didn't say anything, just turned around and left, leaving Adam and a now very perplexed miss Ross behind. She turned to Adam with a small smile. "I guess that's good news", she said, and she seemed genuine. She had just lost her new position, but eventually in her scale of values another person's life meant much more to her than her job. It was something to be grateful for, and surely Adam was feeling very grateful.

"It sure is, miss Ross. I would really appreciate it if you stayed here to celebrate this little joy with me".

She sat in the chair in front of the desk. At six-thirty p.m. they were toasting with some scotch.

"To life", said Jamie.

"And to strong people who struggle for it and win", added Adam.

They both raised their glasses smiling.

_Sometimes destiny is kind_, thought Adam.


End file.
